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Atlassian ALM vs Microsoft Azure DevOps vs Rally Software comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites category, the mindshare of Atlassian ALM is 2.5%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Azure DevOps is 9.5%, down from 16.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Rally Software is 5.3%, down from 6.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Azure DevOps9.5%
Rally Software5.3%
Atlassian ALM2.5%
Other82.7%
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
 

Featured Reviews

BRIANJOHNSON2 - PeerSpot reviewer
Independant Consultant at B&H Designs Ltd
Long-term testing workflows have improved integration of test planning and defect tracking
The deployment depends on whether you are deploying it on your computer or across the program. Cloud-based system deployment takes some time, as it depends on your rights to your computer. I would rate the deployment as a seven on a scale of one to ten. It took a couple of hours to get it right. The IT department deploys it.
Bharadwaj Deepak Mohapatra - PeerSpot reviewer
DevOps Engineer at ENTERPRISE SYSTEM SOLUTIONS LIMITED
Have built reliable end-to-end pipelines and streamlined cloud provisioning through consistent collaboration practices
I am currently working with open-source tools such as Jenkins for my main CI/CD pipeline, and for enterprise clients, I am using Microsoft Azure DevOps CI/CD pipeline. For other clients, I have also implemented CI/CD YAML pipelines through GitLab CI/CD workflow and GitHub Actions. I am creating the end-to-end CI/CD pipeline from development to deployment and monitoring all of this. Azure Boards is easier than Jira for my understanding because there are very easy points to manage the Agile methodology which we work on. Because it is a GUI, sometimes the process may take a few minutes more than the CLI process since the backend is running the exact CLI, but we are commanding through the GUI. There is definitely a time lag, but it is more secure. Microsoft Azure DevOps pipelines work very seamlessly rather than other CI/CD pipelines, as of my understanding. The downside is that the process may take more time when deploying some clusters, Kubernetes, Azure AKS service, or some vast microservice architecture deployments. There may be a little bit of lag I feel, though I cannot tell very strictly that this is a disadvantage, but sometimes it takes a little more time than other cloud infrastructures. All the major things are done by GUI, which is somewhat a little slow. However, if considering automations, process, monitoring, and provisioning, then it is the best cloud service across all the other service providers. Our implementation is a hybrid cloud. Microsoft Azure DevOps is definitely easily scalable. I have worked on many Kubernetes infrastructures and microservice deployments, and I have seen that replication is very good because it is very easy. The replication process is very straightforward. I definitely advocate for using less code because it is very time-consuming. If using GCP or Amazon Web Service, there is more interaction related to work over the CLI process. In terms of Microsoft Azure DevOps, there are many things done by the GUI, which is the best part.
Amit Anand - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr Technical Architect at HCLSoftware
Drilling into change lifecycles has given me clear end to end traceability for every item
Reporting is my main area of concern. Additionally, the migration activity and portability are important areas for improvement. If I needed to move from Jira to Rally Software, having built-in portability or migration utilities would be beneficial. At the time of my use, there was not an inbuilt capability to migrate applications from other third-party solutions to Rally Software. Currently, I am not using Rally Software.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"If you can spend the little effort to configure Jira to support your more complex requirements management, then you can concentrate everything in one tool."
"In Bitbucket, the reviews are pretty good."
"The main power of this tool is the integration between the different products of the Atlassian suite, and we have good integration with work management and software build automation (Bamboo), which is the major strength from this provider."
"The Atlassian ALM suite consists at least of JIRA, Confluence, BitBucket and HipChat - just the tools you need for organizing your teams in a very efficient way."
"As a general purpose tool, JIRA and Confluence are still ahead of the competition."
"The most valuable feature is the Scrum board."
"The interface between the repository and test plan stands out as valuable, and I appreciate building the tests and scenarios in Test Lab and the ability to link defects throughout the system, which Atlassian ALM does better than any other testing products."
"This solution fits very well into our agile product management environment."
"Technical support has been excellent; on that side, Microsoft is very good, and the customer support of Microsoft has really improved this past year, and on the cloud side also we are very satisfied because it offers very good support."
"I found the Kanban board to be the most useful for my needs."
"Mostly, I have found the source code control pipeline and the pull request governance to be very valuable."
"The integration between the Kanban all the way through, including the traceability all the way through to the other end is very useful."
"I like the entire tool because it is a one-stop-solution for DevOps."
"It is a well-integrated product in terms of the development lifecycle."
"Fields can be customized and the reporting is good."
"We use this solution for cloud administration, cloud infrastructure, the database, as an application server, development, and more."
"CA Agile Central helps the entire organization run like one powerful team."
"It documents stories in a way where we do not have to be heavy on front-end requirements, front-end documentation, and front-end workflows."
"Another notable feature is reporting at Portfolio level, and an organised business area which is set up from scratch with this tool can benefit from this feature."
"​It is very stable. It has been on the market a long time."
"The UI/UX of the tool is good with friendly navigation."
"Everything is right in one place, correlated, and related in the right way, and at the right level that allows for planning, execution, and tracking afterwards."
"If you compare Quality Center vs Agile Central, the latter is much better."
"With the portfolio management feature, we were able to understand our capacity for the first time and visually understand all the various initiatives in-flight, and we could provide very clear dashboards to our senior executives in order to be able to choose which projects we did and to check if they were on schedule."
 

Cons

"Atlassian ALM is too expensive. The pricing is very expensive."
"There is room for improvement in the high-level project management."
"Frankly it's a really daunting exercise - challenging, problematic and very flaky."
"The automation for scheduling software and doing software tests should be simplified because it's complex and too rigid."
"Confluence is just a super-inadequate tool for editing documents."
"For project management, the scheduling of the project tasks should be simplified because it's complex and too rigid using the Atlassian Portfolio."
"All Atlassian products are based on JAVA which makes it a bit difficult to trace problems if you don't have much JAVA skilled staff around."
"The solution is stable but at times, the performance is poor. It takes time to load and the response time is not up to the mark."
"We would like some bidirectional synchronization. It's the requirement if you want to analyze it to software requirements, et cetera."
"Templates could be improved."
"Integration and plugins for other tools could better. Like if you want to integrate the DevOps with other tools that are in the market. This could be for the engineering tools to check code quality, application security tools, and DevOps dashboard tools."
"I would like to see more customization available to the administrator."
"I would like to see better integration and collaboration between tools."
"Some of the queries, the way they're built, need to be looked at. We need better query tools."
"The active directory password system needs some improvement because many times the password for the active directory expires before the set time."
"Its interface could be more user-friendly. It could be simplified for users with no prior knowledge. There should also be better tutorials."
"The product needs to have more integration capabilities."
"The solution is expensive."
"The navigation within the tool sometimes is a little tricky for me. I'm sure with more use, more practice, I'll become accustomed to it, but some of the things just aren't intuitive."
"I would like to see more Kanban support. As it stands, it doesn't seem to have the features or the layouts that the teams really need to be able to execute their tasks."
"A lot of the features that we would be looking to add, I am learning may not be within Agile Central, but part of another CA tool set."
"Sometimes it takes a few seconds to scale, such as when changing the size of Windows."
"When you open up a user story, consider opening it up as a modal/dialog box on the top of the page, rather than splitting up the screen."
"General performance could be improved. The tool is not the fastest or most responsive."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There is a community edition available, but if the price were lower for the addons then more people would use the full version."
"The majority of the components are reasonably priced."
"There are other solutions available that are open source and free, such as GitLab."
"Compared to other tools, Microsoft Azure DevOps is a cheap solution."
"It is a subscription model and I only pay for what I use."
"I don't know the pricing of DevOps. It would be much cheaper than ALM because ALM came out as a software product initially. Now they are moving into a cloud and subscription model. In that case, Microsoft is coming from Azure and the cloud and DevOps and software as a service, so it would be much cheaper, but the catch would be that they are trying to get money on all the sides, like an operating system, Microsoft Office, or Microsoft Azure DevOps."
"The main agile features are very expensive."
"The licensing costs are reasonable."
"The pricing of Azure DevOps falls within the average range and it is fixed."
"Frankly, pricing is expensive and needs to be carefully planned for when budgeting."
"From a price point, it's a cost effective solution for our needs."
"We are always looking for a discount, if the solution was less expensive it would be a benefit."
"The license costs are fairly high as compared to some of the other solutions out there."
"Rally Software costs $50 a month, and for a base account, that price is acceptable."
"It is expensive and may not be worthwhile for a small company."
"I understand it's a little more expensive. That is why many people prefer Jira."
"I don't know the exact pricing, but I think the tool is priced high. They provide quality workmanship, good software, regular upgrades, and they're always attentive and listen to users. Everything comes with a price. I think it's an expensive solution compared to Jira or other competitors, but it's a complete package."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
18%
Educational Organization
9%
Healthcare Company
8%
Construction Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Healthcare Company
7%
Insurance Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise2
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business43
Midsize Enterprise28
Large Enterprise69
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise14
Large Enterprise113
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Atlassian ALM?
Atlassian ALM is too expensive. The pricing is very expensive.
What needs improvement with Atlassian ALM?
I am still not satisfied with the requirements area of Atlassian ALM. Atlassian ALM has four parts: test plan, Test L...
What is your primary use case for Atlassian ALM?
I have been using Atlassian ALM for twenty-five years. It used to be called Quality Center, and I first used it in 20...
Which is better - Jira or Microsoft Azure DevOps?
Jira is a great centralized tool for just about everything, from local team management to keeping track of products a...
Which is better - TFS or Azure DevOps?
TFS and Azure DevOps are different in many ways. TFS was designed for admins, and only offers incremental improvement...
What do you like most about Microsoft Azure DevOps?
Valuable features for project management and tracking in Azure DevOps include a portal displaying test results, check...
What do you like most about Rally Software?
Rally offers many features that help the management of activities, coordination, alignment and reports, which applies...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Rally Software?
Rally Software is affordable because our customers also prefer it, and I have never heard concerns about pricing prev...
What needs improvement with Rally Software?
While I'm not heavily involved in project management tools, I am familiar with these tools. One area for improvement ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Azure DevOps, VSTS, Visual Studio Team Services, MS Azure DevOps
CA Agile Central, Rally Enterprise, CA Agile Training, CA Agile Coaching, CA Agile Academy, CA Agile Management , CA ALM
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Facebook, NASA, Cisco, eBay, Redfin, Toyota, Kaiser Permanente, Gilt, CSIRO, Autodesk, The Daily Telegraph, CODE, Illumnia
Alaska Airlines, Iberia Airlines, Columbia, Skype
Physicians Mutual, Harvard Pilgrim HealthCare, Editora Abril, Tata Communications, Level 3 Communications, Seagate, TomTom, Philips, Hiscox, Physicians Mutual, MYOB
Find out what your peers are saying about Atlassian, Microsoft, OpenText and others in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites. Updated: May 2026.
894,807 professionals have used our research since 2012.